"maxed out on its credit etc and is not happier" I came to the conclusion that sustaining the status quo, and even growing modestly, doesn't require a huge amo

"maxed out on its credit etc and is not happier" I came to the conclusion that sustaining the status quo, and even growing modestly, doesn't require a huge amount of effort on average (relative to history, of course). But doing new things does require huge effort. Inventions, discoveries, traveling, new engineering challenges, etc., all seem to take a lot of resources, and the relative share of that consumption seems to be increasing. Lots of people complain about America, and with good reason. But America also does a lot of stuff and there's no denying that. America was heavily involved in almost any invention or advancement that comes to mind from the last hundred years. America is the dominant force in NATO, which seems to have a renewed sense of purpose after a non-NATO country was invaded. And America absorbs huge numbers of migrants for all kinds of reasons, and many of them turn out to be a lot more productive once here. It's hard to imagine all of that happening if everyone was maximizing for happiness. I'm not saying that it's better than happiness, just that it seems America is maximizing something else. (Disclaimer: of course resources are still wasted in pursuit of these other things, and there are externalities.)